Repentance from Sin and Evil - the invitation to a Holy Lent

It's Shrove Tuesday: a day of feasting before the Lenten fast begins tomorrow. At Grace Episcopal Church in Brunswick, our youth will host our annual Pancake Supper to help raise funds for our Youth Mission Trip this summer.

I always feel like I'm standing on the brink on this day about to plunge into the abyss of Lent with its ashes and penitence. I once thought of Lent as depressing ... but I don't think that way anymore. As a cleric, it's a time of calm and reflection after the crazy, break-neck pace of the fall's activities, Advent and Christmas. Even more than Advent, it helps me slow down and focus intentionally on what needs healing and renewal in me and in the world.

I've been online today and looking at liturgical approaches to Lent from different corners of Christianity. I confess I like our Book of Common Prayer's Ash Wednesday liturgy and wouldn't trade it for all the tea in China. I did, however, run across a liturgy that looked pretty good and included Taize chant for the music. I was intrigued until I found the confession prayer which had the following phrase:

"We repent of our humanity."

Wait ... what? Repent means to "turn around" or to "change your mind." It comes from the Greek metanoia which means "turn around." Repent is what we do when we, by God's grace, acknowledge and turn away from Evil and Sin - the powers of Death which will kill not only the body but the soul.

But "repent of our humanity"?! As if being human is inherently evil or bad? As if being human is something to be rejected? And, if repent means to turn around, what is the alternative? To repent of your humanity and ... become a jellyfish? It just makes no sense. It is theologically and ontologically bankrupt. The Orthodox say that Christ became human that we might become divine. Our humanity is blessed, sanctified and honored by Christ's descent among us as one of us. This isn't something to repent of at all!

What we need to repent of is Sin. Admittedly, this is not a popular concept among some Christians who feel it sounds "too judgmental" or "too harsh" and so avoid using the "S-word" in their liturgy. Hence repenting of "our humanity" becomes some sort of cheap, sophomoric way of avoiding the real truth. Theology of the cross demands we not "call good evil and evil good" but name the thing for what it is. The thing we need to name is Sin and it is that from which we need to turn.

This reflection by Dr. Derek Olsen speaks this hard truth well. There is evil in the world. Jesus never wavered in naming it during his time on earth. We have a heavy darkness in each of us. The Church Catholic teaches that Sin comes from "the world, the flesh and the devil." Our fragile human nature falls into Sin all the time. But the good news is that the power of Sin to destroy us who are claimed by Christ in baptism has forever been broken - Sin does not claim us forever.

This does not mean, however, that Sin has ceased to be a presence in our world or in our lives. It is ever there and we are called to self-reflective vigilance as Christians to look at it clearly and unflinchingly - not just in Lent, but always. We are to acknowledge and confess the sin that has crept into the dark corners of our lives and release it to Christ who brings light and healing to us.

I invite you, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent this year. Not by repenting of the humanity you bear, but the Sin which clings closely and from which Christ longs to release you.

Insha'Allah

I finished reading Stephen Prothero's book God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run The World - And Why Their Differences Matter last month. The title is a mouthful but I highly recommend it as an excellent read. Prothero is the chair of the religion department at Boston University and wrote Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs To Know - And Doesn't (perhaps as a professor, he's given to long titles). What Prothero accomplishes in God Is Not One is the analysis of the eight major world religious systems and how they see the basic problem. That problem is what we know at our core: something is just not right with the world (and by extension, humanity). Prothero posits that if we define the problem differently, we will come up with different religious systems to address the problem - some of which involve a God and others which do not (Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism are non-theistic systems). While Prothero admits his analysis is limited and is not always nuanced, I think his contribution to the conversation helps us understand others in a growing pluralistic world.

I was struck at his analysis of Islam and his proposition that the definition of the human problem from the Muslim perspective is that humanity is prideful and unwilling to submit to God/Allah. There are many quotations in the Qur'an which refer to submission to Allah and a devout Muslim knows the phrase Insha'Allah - "If God wills it." Submission to the will of God is the antidote to human ego and pride.

While Christians see the central problem as Sin, we do share a belief that human pride is part of the power of Sin (pride has traditionally been one of the "seven deadly sins"). Perhaps we can listen to our Muslim sisters and brothers and ask the question of how well we submit to God's will in our own lives. Are we listening for what God wants from us or are we more invested in what we want for ourselves? Where might we be called to set aside our ego needs to be right in favor of another plan?

I confess I don't always listen well and submission is hard. I have entered a new phase in my ministry which was precipitated by an abrupt departure from my position with Hospice of Washington County - a departure not of my choosing. Where is God in this? I'm not completely sure but I have been asked to be with a local congregation for a long-term supply assignment. I'm delighted to be with Grace Episcopal in Brunswick MD and hope our time together will be fruitful for everyone involved. An exercise in submission - Insha'Allah indeed.

Whew! Grace happens...

This week's lectionary (Proper 12 RCL) finally gets us to Paul's core theological claim:

I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I know I am not alone in holding this particular text dear to my heart and spiritual journey (this passage is actually on the back of my Cursillo team shirt). I'm glad we finally got here ... after several weeks of Paul pounding us with SIN (capital letters intentional), it's kind of nice to know we're not left wallowing in it!

I have a love/hate relationship with the lectionary. I like the fact it forces me to deal with a lot of different texts all over the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. As a lectionary preacher, I don't have the luxury of picking my personal "text du jour" and constructing my whole worship experience around that one favorite passage (which is not to say that some of my favorite passages are not in the lectionary ... this week proves they do come around). What I don't like is that some of the readings get chopped up in weird ways that aren't always helpful and some authors (like Paul) are not good as "sound bites."

Three weeks ago, I was serving at St. Andrew's Episcopal in Clear Spring. We were squarely into Paul's rhetoric on the power of SIN (primarily in Romans 6 & 7 ... but the "front end" of Romans has a lot of "sin talk"). I told the congregation that I'm not a fan of "sound bite Paul." To really get what Paul is doing with his rhetoric here, you need to read the whole of Romans 1-8 (the second half of the letter goes into other topics). Paul synopsizes his theological point that we are justified sinners, the nature of the power of SIN as a big cosmic force, and how Jesus Christ defeated the power of SIN once for all. The problem with lectionary "sound bites" is they chop up Paul's argument so that it is hard to see his line of thinking.

Paul tends to beat you over the head with SIN to the point that when he gets to the subject of grace, it's as if he shifts gears without a clutch and grabs your attention. You're hearing:

• SIN
• SIN
• SIN
• SIN
  

and trotting down that rhetorical road with Paul only to be caught off guard when he opens Romans 8 with the good news,

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

"What??!! Huh??!! Hang on ... I thought we were talking about sin. 'No condemnation??' Now you've got my attention!!"

And that's where we are this week ... the point where Paul is persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus. I love how he says he is "persuaded." Paul didn't just swallow this story without some work. He has heard, considered, prayed over, and finally accepted that absolutely nothing will separate us from God's love.

I'm blessed to be going back to St. Andrew's this week again to preach on this text. It's like the continuation of a good story and it's nice to be able to preach on the completion of Paul's thoughts.

Scapegoat

When he has finished atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall present the live goat. Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins, putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness by means of someone designated for the task. The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a barren region; and the goat shall be set free in the wilderness. (Leviticus 16:20-22)

This is the passage from Leviticus from which we get the term "scapegoat." The goat bore the guilt, shame and sins of the people on their behalf and it was driven into the wilderness on the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). It was a cleansing ritual so that the people could go on with their lives with a sense of wholeness and a burden being lifted.

But what about the goat? Live long enough, and you'll end up being a symbolic scapegoat for something. Anyone who has been a change agent in their workplace often finds themselves playing the role of the scapegoat! The sins of past inactions, poor policies, and bad decisions get heaped on the one who is trying to make a difference until they are driven out of the group. It is certainly much easier to dump our sins onto another and then drive that person out when they begin to shed light on our sins. But, does this ever cause us to repent of the underlying sin and return to a wholeness of relationship?

One way to understand Jesus' death on the cross was as an atoning death. On him was the sin of all humanity laid and for our sins he died. We still hear language like this in the Church. Jesus was certainly a change agent and, in his ministry, he shed light on the systemic sins of his culture. "... it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed," said Caiaphas (John 11:50). This certainly bears the marks of a scapegoat.

Jesus' death was more than this because of his resurrection. The scapegoat returned! Jesus' resurrection reminds us that we cannot run away from our sins or heap them onto someone else and hope they just go away. Jesus' resurrection is God's reconciling love in action. There are no scapegoats in reconciliation - nobody is driven into the wilderness to die. Even in the midst of our sinfulness (and yeah, there's plenty of that for all of us), we are promised through the resurrection that we will be reconciled back to God ... and to each other.